Story Behind the Song: Miranda Lambert, ‘Bad Boy’

Country songwriter Mando Saenz teamed up with Miranda Lambert to write her song, “Bad Boy,” which appears on her 2016 double album The Weight of These Wings. While they weren’t thinking about the same “bad boy” when writing the song, their collaboration resulted in an easy write for the talented songwriters.

Below, Saenz shares more about the writing process for "Bad Boy" with The Boot.

That was the second time we wrote together. I went over to her house, and she was doing a lot writing at that time for her [then-]upcoming record.

I just had a little of the melody. “Bad boy” was just a lyric that I had in a bridge. I wasn’t necessarily aiming it at that, but she kind of took it to the chorus and it seemed to work out well.

It’s funny: She was thinking of, I guess, a particular guy, and I was thinking of a beer-drinking friend of mine. We wrote it fairly quickly. The melody lent itself ...

Sometimes when you write with girls or someone [who's not like you], you have to channel through them, but she seemed to be really receptive to where the song was going. The chorus parts, she just kind of ran with it, and that was all her.

She seemed happy with it; I didn’t know [that she was going to cut it]. We just have fun hanging, writing and listening to music; I didn’t know if she’d [cut it]. They were doing demos not too long after that, and she sent me a video of them working on that song, so [at that point] I figured they would cut it -- but you never know for sure until they actually do.